Dear Neighbors,

I wanted to inform you of some exciting developments in our own subdivision that may be of interest to you. I believe these developments will change the way you experience the Internet, communicate with others and watch TV while at the same time increasing the value of your home. Unfortunately, these developments may be passing us by.

You may have noticed some of the yards in the entrance to our neighborhood being dug up with new utilities. CenturyLink, our local telephone company, is laying fiber optical cabling to the next phases of Taft Woods East as well as to the new surrounding subdivisions. They are using this new technology for all new construction projects in the Clayton area so that they can be competitive with other providers such as Time Warner.

What is fiber optical cabling? It is a special type of cable that is as thin as a strand of human hair that provides almost an infinite amount of bandwidth for all the different digital services that you consume: TV, telephony and Internet. In addition for those who work at home or have a small business, it can provide even more capacity than traditional cable and telephone connections.

Why is it passing us by? When this neighborhood was first built in 2008, the two original streets had utilities installed before any of the homes were started. On Rockport and Hadley, Sprint/Embarq installed decades old copper technology, as the newer fiber technology was not available. Fast-forward almost 7 years and now fiber optic technology is readily available and is being widely deployed evident by the new construction in the rest of the subdivision. The second phase has already had the new cabling installed while the third phase has yet to be started. Our first phase, unfortunately, is not planning to be upgraded by CenturyLink. Potentially this could impact our resale value as our small number of homes would not have access to this technology compared to the rest of the neighborhood. Finally it would be beneficial for us to be able to have competition with Time Warner for voice, video and ultra high speed Internet.

What can we do? I am in contact with the Eastern North Carolina planning director for CenturyLink. I am trying to include our street in the next phase of the Taft Woods East build out. I would like to see if any of the neighbors would be interested in this exciting addition to our neighborhood and possibly switching to such a service from CenturyLink. You can find the petition online http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fiber-in-taft-woods-east or feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

David Eckard

76 Hadley Ln | 919-752-0662 | david@eckard.us

Further Information

https://www.centurylink.com/fiber

http://www.corning.com/multimedia/flash/ftth_benefits/flash/ftth_benefits.htm

http://sarahsnodgrass.com/blog/will-signing-up-for-google-fiber-increase-the-value-of-your-home